The private vehicle has changed the urban world. It offers its owners the freedom to travel whenever they want and it is easily accessible from an almost limitless number of locations throughout an urban area, and it has a high availability/reliability ratio, approximately 99.9%. However, the cost of owning a private vehicle has increased at a significantly higher rate than the median income. Moreover, the increase in the rate of vehicle ownership has increased traffic and parking congestion in urban areas. Standard ownership methods are leasing and purchasing. For the urban-dweller, this equates to ownership costs that are continuous for a vehicle that is actually used a small fraction of that of the suburban or rural vehicle owner, who relies on the vehicle on a daily basis. Furthermore this type of ownership has almost wiped out other modes of urban transportation because they cannot compete against the private vehicle's much lower incremental costs.
While the use of vehicles for hire is an alternative to the urban-dweller, there are drawbacks associated with known options as well. For example, the rental and livery industries are certainly available to the urban dweller. However, these are usually exceedingly expensive and not practical for at least this reason. Moreover, while car-sharing methods are known, these known methods do not provide the needed substantial certainty of availability, nor convenience needed. For example known car-sharing systems are operate essentially using to the same basic principal as conventional car renting. If a vehicle is available, they will rent it to you. There is never any implication that you will always find a car.
In addition, known car-sharing methods require vehicles to be moved for a significant portion of total vehicle use. Clearly, this is less than desirable, requiring excessive manpower, and inconvenience to the customer, who must wait for a vehicle to be delivered, in essence. In order to build a system that improves car-sharing, efficient demand estimation is required, so vehicles are available to the customer without significant waiting and with having rarely to relocate the vehicles.
What is needed is a method and system that will provide effectively all of the features and advantages of a vehicle ownership such as freedom of use, dependability and accessibility; and at the same time eliminate substantially all of the problems, such as high costs in conventional vehicle ownership, rental and leasing, as well as and urban congestion. Advantageously, such a method and system is implemented in a way that will complement other modes and will let a person take whatever mode that best suits his or her needs at the time without being penalized with the high overhead of private vehicle usage.
It is an object to provide a system that predicts and anticipates vehicle demand and have a vehicle waiting for a customer without the customer's having to make a reservation. It is also an object to provide a system that could economically let a user check-out a car from an almost limitless number of locations throughout a city. These locations could be city streets, parking lots and both attended and unattended parking garages. The trips provided by this system could be single one-way trips between any two locations, such as the morning trip to the workplace. These trips could also be round trips to and from the same location, like weekend trips to Grandma's house or quick trips to the drug store. An objective of the system and method of the present invention is to offer the same freedom and dependability of a private vehicle and to let a person perform the same type of urban driving done in a private vehicle but through a car sharing operation; and to do this over an entire urban region so that the greatest number of people can more economically use mass transit and thereby reduce urban traffic congestion.
To accomplish these and other objects according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention an automated car sharing system includes an automated checkout unit, which is operatively coupled to at least one vehicle, and a central control center that performs control and monitoring functions. The automated checkout unit is responsive to a customer request and is adapted enable at least one vehicle for use by a customer.
To further accomplish these and other objects according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention the system and method of the present invention contain a demand prediction model capable of adapting to the dynamic nature of urban vehicle travel and thereby enabling the system to offer a customer substantial certainty (e.g., approximately 99% or greater) of finding a car. To further accomplish these and other objects according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention limits and controls have to be maintained on the service offering.